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They Came, They Saw, They Paused

MAASTRICHT, The Netherlands — If any event gives some idea of where the art market is heading, it is the European Fine Art Fair, which closes Sunday in this southern Dutch city.

Tefaf, to use the fair acronym, spans the globe. Dealers from the Americas and Asia rub shoulders with Europeans.

Leaders in Old Master paintings are here, like Otto Naumann and Richard Feigen of New York. So are Anthony Blumka, a heavyweight in Medieval and Baroque objets d’art, and Jerome Eisenberg, the owner of the Royal-Athena Galleries and the dean in the American trade in Greek and Roman antiquities.

U.S. museum directors and curators made the trip to Maastricht in droves.

The interest was there, as vivid as ever, but the message that came across during the first two days, when the tone is usually set, was mixed.

Evidence that the last-chance syndrome still operates was provided even in areas that are rarely in the limelight, like furniture.

At the private viewing on March 14, Alan Rubin of Pelham Galleries parted with eight dining chairs made in China after an English model of the 1740s. The rare set, superbly carved, will adorn the newly acquired house of an English connoisseur. The price tag, €420,000, or $580,000, was not a problem. More interestingly still, a pair of porphyry vases with early Louis XV ormolu (gilt bronze) mounts was bought there and then by a North American collector. The handles were wrought in the 1730s with dazzling virtuosity, but the vases are unusual, with profiles that call to mind Chinese porcelain models. The asking price for the enigmatic pair was €265,000.

Works of art set in the concrete of cultural history continue to be actively sought after. A unique guéridon made by the southern German cabinetmaker Johannes Klinckerfuss stood out on the Galerie Neuse stand. A porcelain plaque with hunting dogs in a landscape painted in shades of gray is set into the circular top of the small tripod table. The initials CAM, followed by a date, 1817, are painted on the underside of the porcelain, revealing the identity of the painter, Charlotte Mathilde von Württemberg. The daughter of King George III of England, Charlotte displayed her precocious artistic talent as a child. She was involved in the interior design of Schloss Favorite in Ludwigsburg, where a cabinet is decorated with a porcelain tableau signed by her in 1815. At €300,000, the rarity of a kind that never appears in the market was worth a go. A German collector will have it delivered it to his house.

For some very spectacular works of art with famous signatures, the going can still be easy.

A marble group of “Daphnis and Chloe,” 140 centimeters high, or about 56 inches, with the name of Jean-Baptiste Carpeaux and the date 1874 carved on the base, catches the eye from 10 meters away on the stand of the London dealer Daniel Katz.

The sculpture passed through the hands of the Paris dealers Fabius Frères, who loaned it to the Carpeaux retrospective at the Petit-Palais in 1955-56. It was still theirs when seen at the Musée Jacquemart-André as part of the exhibition “Le Second Empire de Winterhalter à Renoir,” held from May to June in 1957. In those distant days, academic sculpture, seen as kitsch, did not sell easily. Times have changed. On March 14, an East Coast collector agreed to settle the €3.5 million bill.

Awareness that some categories are vanishing fast helps trigger transactions, even when buyers feel the need to be cautious.

Photo

A still life by Balthasar van der Ast was bought by the Zurich dealer David Koetser at Sotheby’s London in December and sold quickly at the European fair for $3 million.Credit
Koetser Gallery Ltd.

High-quality sculpture from Ancient Egypt may not be available for long. On the stand of the London dealer Rupert Wace, the bronze head of a deity, 15 centimeters high, that topped the prow of a funerary barque, executed between the 11th and eighth century B.C., was negotiated on March 14. Mr. Wace did not disclose the price, which probably stood around €200,000 to €250,000.

Gordian Weber of Cologne, who showed a rare group of the Egyptian god Thoth, represented as an Ibis worshipped by a kneeling Pharaoh, concluded a deal with equal celerity. The sixth-century B.C. group was on the Western market by 1957. Its documented presence in the Galleria Serodina at Ascona in Switzerland was an important selling point for the €145,000 bird. That should preserve it from any future repatriation claims. A cutoff date was set at 1970 by Unesco, after which antiquities are considered to be unlawfully held unless accompanied by an export license. Accordingly, proper documentation is becoming a determining factor to those who think long term.

Indeed, concerns about title to ownership may have hampered transactions on some important Asian sculptures.

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Rossi & Rossi of London and Hong Kong had no trouble in disposing of a small Buddhist high relief from present-day Pakistan. Thousands of similar fragments have now been hacked away from second- to eighth-century ruined stupas (symbolical tombs of the Buddha) and monasteries over the past 150 years. The devastation tragically goes on and a repatriation claim for the €45,000 sculpture is unlikely to be made.

By contrast, the future of Rossi & Rossi’s imposing standing Buddha of the 10th century, 140 centimeters high, does not look so secure. The Pala period sculpture in high relief must come from some major site — Fabio Rossi cites Bodh Gaya in the Indian state of Bihar as a plausible provenance. At €1.2 million, it was unsold when I checked Friday morning.

The most subtly nuanced message that may be read into the first acquisitions at Maastricht was delivered by Old Master paintings.

Great beauty associated with a famous signature continued to prove irresistible. An admirable marine signed around the 1650s by Salomon van Ruysdael graces the stand of Richard Green of London. Never seen before in the market, the panel remained unpublished until it surfaced at Maastricht. An English connoisseur who collects across the board cracked at the sight of the €1 million panel in mint condition.

Supreme quality, if truly overwhelming, can goad into action without the added stimulus of discovery. David Koetser displayed a still life by Balthasar van der Ast that the Zurich dealer bought at Sotheby’s London as recently as Dec. 5, 2012. The sophisticated composition is probably the most beautiful ever by the Dutch master seen on the open market within living memory. The $3 million still life went to an American connoisseur minutes after the private viewing began.

Lower down in the financial scale, some great rarities were also snapped up. Roman Herzig, who owns the Galerie Sanct Lucas in Vienna, had no trouble in finding a taker for an €800,000 study of a lion’s head by Delacroix. The French painter kept the oil sketch all his life, and, when auctioned in 1864 as part of his estate at the Hôtel Drouot, it fetched a then huge 400 francs.

An even rarer tiny portrait painted around 1875 by Eva Gonzalès was disposed of just as quickly. The likeness of her sister Jeanne Gonzalès also stayed with the French Impressionist throughout her life. The work of the artist, who died in 1883 at age 34, is scarce. The €120,000 asking price guaranteed a prompt sale.

Interest is rising in the 19th-century movements that preceded Impressionism or ran parallel to it. This played its part in the transaction concluded at Didier Aaron of Paris over a vigorous self-portrait painted by the academic Meissonnier, probably in the 1870s. It will travel to an East Coast residence whose owner did not take much of a chance at €55,000.

But there was no blind rush on art, however modestly priced. If not driven to act by a feeling of imperious urgency, buyers moved slowly. Few red dots signaled sales at the end of the second day on stands dealing in 20th-century art.

Studio 2000, a Dutch gallery based in Blaricum, shows one of the finest paintings by the Belgian Gustave De Smet. Signed and dated 1915, “Houses at the Nieuwezijds Voorburgwal” is done in an original modern style with an expressionist whiff. The asking price for this view of Amsterdam is €42,000. No offer had been made by Friday morning.